


You

by elvntari (orphan_account)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Brief mentions of Elros, Canonical Character Death, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Halls of Mandos, It could be anyone but lbr, Maglor's deteriorating mental health, Monologue, Other, Post-Canon, Talking To Dead People, even after death, its daeron hes talking to, poor guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/elvntari
Summary: In a world where Maglor drowned, he finds himself in Mandos, thinking of the only other soul that has made any attempt to talk to him.





	You

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the AU where Maglor and Daeron had met before the end of the story, and had a relationship, but only if you want to imagine the person he's talking to as Daeron. Really, if you ignore the description (all headcanon anyway) it could be anyone.

Oh, you.

You with your laughter and song like a million little ringing bells, and the gentle babble of a stream -- a spring -- the echo from the bottom of a well.

You.

You and your smile of soft, white marble, who led me through the weeping willows in the garden. You told me a thousand years from now they’d still stand strong. What went wrong? Oh, what went wrong?

You again.

You listened to the lilt in my voice as I spoke, told me I sounded like something was wrong, asked me if I’d hurt my throat. I laughed, as always, and you turned and left me alone to think, and think, I did. 

I could talk about you for years, but the years wax and wane and I get no closer to the answer hidden in the frame of the words you left me, bundled in brown paper bags and --  _ oh _ \-- I’m mad, I’m so, so mad. 

I’ve no right to be, you say, but that never stopped me anyway.

A family quirk, perhaps. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!

Did the water hurt, when it hit my lungs?

Oh,  _ you. _

You were angry, if I remember rightly. Angrier than anything I’d ever seen before with blazing eyes and burning tongue -- wasn’t I supposed to be the fiery one? But my fire is gone, and that argument is won by bones washed upstream, against all nature, against our good faith and now against you, o songless one.

I laugh.

Crazy, they call me, they call me crazy, deranged, wrong in the head.  _ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned _ . But what about me? Neither woman nor scorned, yet rotting in hell and simmering in fury indiscriminately. I bite, I bat your hands away,  _ when did  _ you  _ die? _ I want to ask, but your eyes are damp, and I know your answer. 

Oh, you, did I kill you, my love? I’m so sorry. I had no idea. 

You must know I had no idea. 

They say drowning is peaceful somewhere. But drowning is the struggling, the thrashing and the scratching at  _ anything _ , anything at all to save yourself from the cool embrace of the waves. I tasted salt in my mouth, and salt in the corners of my eyes, salt stinging the burning scars on my hands. Everything was salt.

The scars on your body glow -- all dim (the nick on your thumb, the scratch at the arch of your cheekbone, the snip at the bottom of your ear) but one, the great-gaping and green-glowing chasm in your chest, straight over your heart. I smiled. You hid it well, but you always had a flair for the dramatic.

I had scars in all kinds of places, of course, every soldier does: there was the one carving a line up from my jaw to the centre of my cheek, then the one right above my hip, that barely skimmed my organs, and the clean slice just below my shoulder. But there were scars from my childhood, too; dim ones, like yours: the time I cut my finger while my father taught me to whittle a flute, or the time I sliced open my thumb peeling potatoes, or even the time I stood on a knife my brother had, for some inane reason, left lying on the floor.

I let you trace your lips, your fingertips across them once only, asking me the story behind every single one. You acted surprised when they were quotidian, as if you’d never considered that I, too, could’ve had a childhood, and a mundane one at that. Oh, of all the things to surprise you about me, it was that. I could’ve laughed. I could’ve cried. Instead I caught you by the chin, forced you to look me in the eyes and tell me exactly what you thought of me.

_ I love you. _ You said, but I don’t think you meant it. I don’t think you realised that you didn’t mean it, at least not yet.

By the time you meant it, I was long gone, and you even longer. Funny how that happened, isn’t it?

I let you speak to me for the first time in eons. 

_ Why? _ You asked, and I shook my head.

The truth is, I wanted to see him. I heard that he was gone, and I wanted to go too, in some hope I’d find him before he left forever, so that I could apologise, or maybe even just so that I could see how much he’d grown. Is that not what a parent does? Find their child after a long separation and tell them how much they’ve grown? It’s a coping mechanism of some sort--a way to acknowledge all of the lost years without truly giving them weight--and there’s a comedy to it, too, it’s comforting to know that, despite everything, one constant is the same: we all grow; we all change. 

I was too late, you know, I missed him. Or, well, I was some screaming spirit dripping fire like water, unable to recognise a single face I saw. I was told he found me, that he cried, and then asked me what happened, and then cried some more, then tied to embrace me, only to find that he could still feel the burn of flame even after death. I’d never tell you this. You were sheltered, no matter how much you protest, and some things are too tragic to be sculpted into words. There’s a selfish part of me that laments that the other one won’t find me here, but there isn’t a single bone of my non-existent body that could fathom the possibility that he might die.

I think you can tell. We sit together in silence, both securely tormented by the knowledge that neither of us every got to see the people we loved again. 

I haven’t spoken to my brother. We only came across each other once -- I, still dripping liquid fire and he, burning in some maelstrom of it. Fire for both of us, and for our father, and for the rest; either glowing embers or raging storms of white hot anguish. We all burned. I couldn’t see him through the flames, but I knew it was him, and he knew it was me, and he simply grew to twenty feet and dissipated in in twelve different directions, like a cursed bonfire. Perhaps he was disappointed. He thought that at least  _ I  _ would be safe, living in some way, but he was wrong. None of us were ever safe. 

I wonder if he’s spoken to any of the others, but even I only catch a glimpse of something bright and burning in the corner of my eye, only to turn and find it blown out as if it were a candle in the wind, fragile and flickering. 

The longer we sit, the more I can see you. You, with the wooden dark of your hair, spilling down over your shoulders, cut off at your breast. You, with your green eyes, and the perfect symmetry of your brow. You with your soft lips, that I can never remember the sensation of. You will leave here soon. I can tell. And I will remain, still burning, still dripping.

The time for poetry is long over.

The time for goodbye is nigh.

**Author's Note:**

> I had Maglor become less poetic/rhyming as the monologue progressed as some representation of how he sobers up the longer he stays there--noting that here in case it didnt come off properly; I'm kind of a newbie to symbolic writing structure, despite having done five years of English Literature.
> 
> Please leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed!


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